


Step up when everyone else backs down

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [68]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 03:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18202631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: All around him there's only death and destruction, Adelar has fallen.





	Step up when everyone else backs down

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.
> 
> written for: COW-T #9  
> prompt: Heroic Gestures

The plunderers come in the middle of the night.

They are at least fifty men, all from the south, with big black war horses that are used to smash human's skulls under their hooves. Their attack is sudden and unexpected. The moment the villagers realize what's happening, the whole place is already on fire. Adelar is a small village and it has no valuable treasures nor army to defend them. It has raised many of the king's soldiers over the years, but they never stayed because there's nothing for them here.

There's nothing for the plunderers either, that is why they turn sour very quickly. Finding no spoils to satisfy their hunger, they start destroying everything as a payback. According to their ruthless way of life, villages like Adelar are meant to be pillaged. If they can't give anything, then they have to pay in blood.

That horrible noise – a confusion of screams and crackles and hideous laughter – is what throws Blaine down the bed. His house is at the end of the village, and that's what saved it from the first wave of those bastards, but it's not going to be safe for long. He grabs his swords from under the bed and runs out in the mayhem that his home village have become. Fire is eating it whole. Houses and buildings are wrapped in flames, as if a giant hand had descended upon them and crashed them between its fingers, like in the old tales of fire titans roaming the earth in the time before men.

People are dying everywhere Blaine looks. Those that aren't trapped under the burning roofs and crumbling walls of their houses are falling under the merciless swords of the plunderers as they try to run away. There are only farmers and breeders here, and no one else. The handful of young people who know how to use a sword are no match for former soldiers and mercenaries. Blaine trained all those kids – teens of fifteen at most – and he has to watch them die one after the other in front of his very eyes. Growling, he throws himself at the group of horses that are coming his way. The men who ride them raise their swords at him, but he is no farmer.

He mows down the first two, who drop on the ground with a wet thud amidst the scared neighs of their horses. Then, he knees and cuts the tendons of the two horses coming next. The massive beasts collapse onto themselves, bringing their knights along with them. Blaine's blades find their necks right after that and they're gone in a spray of blood. “Get out of there!” He screams at the last three of his older students that, though trembling, are still desperately trying to act like a defensive line for their fellow villagers. “Run!”

But they can't hear him over the roar of the fire and the plunderers shouting orders to each other. They are moving in crisscrossed formation, so there's no way of escaping one without facing another. You either kill them or die. And his kids are dying, because they are just kids playing a game they weren't ready to play yet. Blaine gets there too late, they are all staring at the night sky with empty eyes. Blaine screams in frustration, then, and runs after the murderers, taking down one of those bastards after the other, because that's a game _he_ can play very well, instead.

All around him there's only death and destruction, Adelar has fallen. That's when he hears the crying – loud and desperate – and he stops, the swords pointing to the ground after the last killing. He looks over to see three set of eyes behind a turned table. Three of the smallest children of his group. Two boys and a girl, four years of age. Leo is scared to death and he can't stop crying. The other two are shaking too, but they're trying to make him stop before the plunderers hear them. There is no one with them. 

Blaine sees the man coming from behind what's left of the church. He mounts a black stallion with hooves as big as his head. He has seen the toddlers and he's gritting his teeth, his eyes completely devoid of emotions. These are not human beings. They are monstrous beasts. “No!” Blaine runs. He runs as fast as he can despite the exhaustion and the smoke from the fire that makes it hard to breath. He runs and stumbles in the piles of body scattered around him. He crawls, then, to scramble back up. One of his swords is broken, the other is covered in blood to the hilt, he can feel that viscosity on his finger. He tightens his grip on the hilt as he stands up again, growling as the plunderer raises a sort of sledgehammer above his head, ready to deliver a single fatal blow to the children. “Get down!” Blaine screams at them.

Adam reacts first. He throws himself on the other two and flattens them onto the ground, right on time for Blaine to get off the ground, jump over them and crash against the plunderer with both his swords raised. The impact throws the man off his horse, who neighs irritated and stomps a few times. Landing in the mud, Blaine fights with the assailant, who's bigger than him but slower and less trained. Each of Blaine's blows is precise, powerful and vicious. The plunderer tries to say something, his hands raised in defense. Blaine plunges both blades in him – for his children and the village.

The kids, a few feet away, are covered in mud and blood. Breathing heavily, Blaine drops on his knees, his swords forgotten in the body of the man, and he holds them in his arms as they shiver and cry. The four of them are what's left of Adelar. Three small children and him, that's all.


End file.
